Alexi Giannoulias: “I didn’t know the extent of their activity.”

“If I knew then what I know now, these are not the kind of people that we’d do business with,” he added, “but that’s not how banks work.” Asked again if he knew that criminal figures were the recipients of some of those loans, Alexi Giannoulias (D-IL) said again, “I didn’t know the extent of their activity.”

Yes. This was Alexi Giannoulias’s answer to the question of whether Alexi Giannoulias and his fellow bankers knew about the entire pimp, bookie, and mobster thing before they lent all that money to all those pimps, bookies, and mobsters. He didn’t know the extent of their activity. He said this. Twice.